Meeting Summary: 19 February 2005

Meeting Summary: 19 February 2005

This meeting continued our discussion of ways, whys, and wherefors to customize TMG. We worked on creating a custom flag and a custom tag.

The Custom Flag

A flag is a one-character bit of information that's very useful in helping you select groups of individuals. If you're considering whether to use a flag or a tag to record your data, consider some of these flag limitations.

Flag values can only be one character. If you want to write more, use a tag.
Although flag values can be included in some reports, the information they provide cannot be part of a narrative sentence. If you want that information to appear in the body of a narrative report, it must be recorded in a tag.
Citations cannot be attached to a flag. If you feel the information requires a citation, it must be entered in a tag.

Use flags to control accent colors and "color code" your picklist and other screens to dramatically illustrate to which selected group a person belongs.
Multi-step report filters usually require flags. The "Census Candidates" Report is an illustration of this process.
Flags can be set by complicated report filters. The resulting flag values may be used to quickly filter the Project Explorer.
- The Project Explorer Filter screen shown here has two conditions. Persons included are descendants of Aaron Case, the family flag value set by a Descendants of ... report. These descendants are also persons for whom no 1930 census record has been found, the temprorary flag value set by the multi-step "Census Candidates" report.
- The Person Screen and Project Explorer shown here illustrate the ease by which the data base may be filtered and examined when flag values are used to filter the Project Explorer.
Using flag values allows one to add interest, variety, and information to a web site created by John Cardinal's Second Site without necessitating a lot of extra work. All the icons in this Second Site report are controlled by flag values set in my TMG database. The different colored trees mimic the accent colors in TMG and show from which Case sibling each person descends. The military symbols show in what war the person fought and the Civil War icons are active hyperlinks. The tombstone icons link the user to the relevant cemetery photograph pages; the spreadsheet icons link users to the census analysis pages. All these are controlled by flag values in TMG.

In our session, we created a Cause of Death flag. This flag could be used to quickly find all people in the data set who died of diphtheria, pneumonia, or any other disease defined by the flag value. Imagine what a descendant chart or the Project Explorer might look like if the names were color-coded to indicate the cause of death.

The Custom Tag

I no longer have any idea what tags come standard with TMG, but I counted 92 Standard Tags in my Tag List. This doesn't include the LDS tag types, as I don't show them on my list. I've added quite a few Custom Tags to my program. It's fun to see that some of the custom tags created by members of the old Maryland TMG User Group now appear on the standard tag list or are included in Getting the Most out of TMG. Creating custom tags is an excellent way to improve consistent data entry and it enriches the quality of your research. "What should be a tag and what should be a source?" is a question that comes up repeatedly. As far as I'm concerned, they're not mutually exclusive. The following is my personal opinion and should not be construed as being endorsed by Wholly Genes.

If you want the data to appear in the body of narrative report, it belongs in a tag. If TMG has an appropriate standard tag, use it. If not, create a custom tag.
If you want to link a number of people to the data, use a tag for the information.
If you want to attach a citation to the data, put the information in a tag.
If you have a class of information that you want easily accessible in your data base, but don't plan to use in a report, it may be helpful to create a custom tag for that information.
If you want to create a custom sentence for certain information, you may need to create a custom tag.

Warning before creating too many custom tags! If you've used the custom tag for any person in the data base, you can't delete that custom tag without first deleting its every appearance. In other words, experiment with new custom tags to determine their value. I have several I don't use very much anymore. Of course, there are many standard tags I've never used, too.

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